Picture yourself standing at an intersection—black asphalt, gently-cracked concrete sidewalks, weeds pushing through, with some traffic lights, signs, cameras, and a few cars stopped, waiting, with others whizzing by. There are shimmering, bright-white bicycle lanes and pedestrian crosswalks; other people are passing through, too. There's a business, a drugstore, or grocery, maybe, on one corner, and a fence-topped retaining wall on another, with grassy strips along the sides. You know the place I'm talking about; you can fill in the rest of the details yourself. It's a constructed, eminently human-made place.
Bear with me; I swear there's a point to this.
Now: imagine that you slip on a pair of augmented reality goggles while standing at this intersection. The goggles boot up, and, as you look around, they display little bubbles of white text describing the invisible, bureaucratic rules that govern the place. The density of the text is overwhelming; you get dizzy, go cross-eyed, because as you flick your eyes across the space you see that there are rules for the exact mix and thickness of asphalt coating the road, for the luminosity of the paint on it, for the shade of the traffic lights, the shape of the signs; there are dozens, hundreds of rules for each car stopped there and passing through, for their size and fuel efficiency and registration and the tint of their windows and the brightness of their headlights; there are rules for the width of the sidewalks, for the symbols used on the signs, for how much grass can grow in the medians, and to what length. There are rules for how long traffic can flow through, and how long pedestrians can meander across, and where they can do it, and for the imperceptible angle of the road so that rain can run off, and for the grates and drains and covers and access hatches, and the size and shape bumpy bright tactile paving at either end of the crosswalk, and for the beep of the countdown timer, and for who yields to whom. There are rules for how often all of the roads and equipment and lights and signs and cars and all their parts need to be maintained, and updated, and repaired, and by whom, and using what. There are rules—
You take the goggles off, vision swimming, blinking away the afterimage of text. And now, perhaps, you recognize the subtext: Because this is a built, entirely human space, some person, at some point, somewhere, made decisions about how each and every aspect of the intersection ought to be. Oftentimes those decisions are required by law, or statute, or code, or ordinance, though they can also arise from simple need. But this only magnifies the point: people have had to think about—and probably argue, and research, and discuss—each and every aspect of this artificial, constructed crossroads.
The bureaucratic rules that govern this one location are mind-boggling—but the invisible, imagined rules that govern all human-made spaces, and all the natural spaces we've dominated, for as long as we've tracked such things and as long as we live in a society that continues to do so, are, for all intents and purposes, infinite.
This puts me in mind of two writers, both of whom I've been reading a lot, lately: The first is Franz Kafka, best known for The Metamorphosis (but whose novels The Trial and The Castle are more relevant here), who was a cog in the bureaucratic machine himself and obsessed with its increasingly alienating, disorienting nature in the modern world—how invisible rules dictate and divert our lives, how we are impotent in the face of them. The second is Jorge Luis Borges, who told stories about literal and figurative labyrinths, infinite libraries, encyclopedias of places that never existed, and, in one of my favorite stories, a lottery, ran by an all-powerful company, that through unknown mechanisms dispersed prizes and punishments to an entire populace for so long, and so comprehensively, that they stopped questioning why and simply accepted it as a normal facet of life.
Infinite bureaucracies and the twisting, discomfiting worlds invoked by Kafka and Borges encourage a healthy skepticism for modern bureaucracies and institutions. I resonate with that; I feel it deeply. There should be skepticism towards bureaucracy; it should be inspected, and revised, and reinvented, constantly evolving to fit the needs of a society. It too often isn't. So I do, on some level, empathize with the frustration and suspicion many folks on the right, including the current administration, hold towards our slow-moving, unknowable, inefficient, infinite bureaucracy, and towards the institutions created to implement it.
But—but—as someone who has studied bureaucracies, and who, until recently, was a bureaucrat, I also can't help but to think: What is the alternative? The infinite bureaucracy that we've created is a desperate, trundling, and imperfect response to an infinitely complex world changing faster than we have the capacity to predict or understand. We're trying to impose structure, order, to lay track ahead of a society hurtling forward as best and as quickly as we can, because if we don't, then...what? What is the alternative?
It's all there for a reason. Every infinite part of it. Some person, at some point, somewhere, made decisions to try to make the world a bit better, or a bit more predictable, or a bit safer. Or, maybe, to make the world worse. That happens too, all the time; bureaucracy is amorphous and imperfect. It should be questioned, should be inspected with a degree of skepticism and perspective, as demonstrated by Kafka, and Borges. It should never be static—but neither should it be destroyed. Because, again: What is the alternative? What happens to the train when it runs out of track?
☕ Project Curses
Work on revising my novel, Project Curses, has continued little by little. Progress has been slow, given recent events in my professional and personal life. But that's about to change! Tomorrow I'll begin my summer schedule of writing full-time—and while getting on said schedule will undoubtedly take some figuring out and adjustment, I'll be going from stealing away a few minutes of the day to spending hours writing. I'm anticipating that this will result in rapid progress on the revision effort, but I have been wrong before. We'll see how things are going next time I check in!
♟️ Project Rift
A couple of weeks ago I teased that I'm beginning work on a new novel-length project. This is it! I'm keeping the details hush-hush for now (as with Curses, I don't want to commit to any particular story beats or schedules), but I'm excited about this one. I'll be spending a portion of my days writing this new story, and the rest focused on revision; I think the juxtaposition will be nice.
📚 Reading
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka | As I said up top, I've been reading a lot of Kafka because...well, because I'm resonating with him right now, given current events, and because his work is providing inspiration for my new writing project. If you've never read him (which, fair), The Metamorphosis is a great place to start. It's an upsettling story about a guy turning into a big bug, sure, but it gets at some very relatable, very modern anxieties in an oblique and novel way. If you need extra incentive, there's an excellent audiobook version narrated by Benevide Cucumberpatch. It's worth a listen just to hear him read you a bedtime story!*
*It should go without saying that, in actuality, The Metamorphosis makes a terrible bedtime story.
After releasing just a couple of singles in 2023, Loaded Honey, a collaboration between Jungle members Lydia Kitto and J Lloyd, just released their first album, and it's just so good—warm and groovy and nostalgic and danceable in a way that's perfect for summer evenings.
In the frame: The quilt garden at the North Carolina Arboretum.
"He entered the cafe. There was the cat, asleep. He ordered a cup of coffee, slowly stirred the sugar, sipped it (this pleasure had been denied him in the clinic), and thought, as he smoothed the cat's black coat, that this contact was an illusion and that the two beings, man and cat, were as good as separated by a glass, for man lives in time, in succession, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant."
– Jorge Luis Borges, "The South"
Borges is one of my favorite writers. His stories are heady, and often opaque, but—like the fractals and labyrinths he wrote about—easy to get lost in.
Today's show & tell comes from maybe my favorite of his stories, "The South", and resonates with me for two reasons: One, he clearly loves and respects cats as much as I do; two, outside the story, this is a lovely observation, and in the context of the story it's a brilliant metaphor. It's really, really hard to do both as a writer, and as a reader it requires reflection to understand the quote on either level. I recommend reading the story if you get the chance—and/or to go pet a cat.
Finally, and on the subject of cats—here's a photo of Weasley for making it through a denser-than-normal newsletter. I appreciate you! Talk soon!
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